Yoga and Recovery: Yoga for Healing the Habit of Overconsuming

Looks like we are on-trend for 2026 by embracing enoughness!

Perhaps you read the Guardian article by Jodi Wilson which explores the wisdom in decluttering, simplifying and releasing from the binds of being “overwhelmed with stuff”.

This was music to my ears, eyes and whole nervous system:

Wahoo! Tons of readers pondering what they can let go of to practice ‘enoughness’ as Jodi articulates it.

The article focuses on the freedom that arises when we stop overconsuming everything from online content to groceries and possessions. These are all exterior things that clutter up one’s sense of balance, ease, fluidity.

I loved this article. And I want to take it a stage further to look at it through the lens of Yoga.

Sorry, not sorry, for being a broken record when I say that enoughness is SO part of Yoga.

Some of my most well loved bits of Yoga philosophy, the principles of aparigraha (non-grasping, at doing more, getting more) and santosha (contentment), encapsulate inner and outer enoughness.

We might deepen these enquiries by asking ourselves what drives the lust to buy more, get more, do more, be more?

Well, we can forgive ourselves for this lusting because we humans are simply wired that way. It is in our DNA and primal adaptive patterns to source outwards, to seek out the things we once needed for literal survival: shelter, safety, nourishment. These things settled the nervous system back then because with these things we could live and feel safe from predators.

But what about now? Why do we keep on keeping on with accumulating more stuff?

Wanting everything, everyone, and being everywhere all the time because I could never feel like I was getting enough, is the story of my life before Yoga (and recovery and therapy!) Like many people, my coping mechanism for soothing my fears and avoiding emotional pain was to use people, places and substances as crutches.

I needed a buzz to feel normal.

These days I literally ask myself, what am I trying to protect myself from/run from by buying this? What feeling am I chasing by acquiring this clothing/ drink/ award/ validation?

It’s self-enquiry, called svadhyaya in Yoga, that needs self-compassion as we delve the realms of unconscious drivers, possibly ones that drive addiction.

Looking back, I see that I so badly wanted the buzzy feeling of relief and validation that sprang up when something was bought for me as a child. Phew! I’ve been bought this toy so I must be safe and good enough!

New shoes, buzz! New top, buzz! New man, buzz! More drugs, buzz buzz buzz!

I am the same as billions of humans. I want things because A: I do not believe I am enough. B: I need things/stuff/ substances to make me feel safe or worthy or good enough or to distract me from these painful beliefs. OK, maybe not so much these days, but these dopamine driving habits, and their foundational core believes die hard. That is why we need to hold ourselves with softness while we sift the habits of overconsuming, that no longer serve us.

We need practices that soothe our nervous system so that we somatically, into our bones, remember we are enough. Especially if we are trying out sobriety from any damaging habit. During these times the brain’s ‘dopamine balance’, like a set of old school scales, comes back into centre. This can be uncomfortable physically, mentally and emotionally leaving one feeling off balance, sick, uneasy and stuck.

While we feel the feelings that overconsumption may have masked up until now, we need kind people, kind body work, kind breath work, self compassion, nature and perhaps a kind therapist and doctor to guide us through the discomfort. The pattern of outsourcing our inner sense of worth on to external stuff, is likely to yield when we day by day create an inner sense of enoughness, worth, safety, fulfilment or whatever you want to call it.

Yoga alone is, ironically, not enough to help a person recover from addictions of any kind. Yet the framework of non-grasping keeps us awake to the habits, some damaging, some not, that we may unconsciously fall in to. Plus, the peace that I hope your body reveals for you during your yoga practice, may just start to filter into your off mat life too. Peace and stillness which reminds us to pause, consider, self soothe, ask for help, redirect if we get tugged toward outsourcing our enoughness.

I do not want to be a full minimalist or renunciate living in a cave. I want to gather nice things and adorn my body as a CELEBRATION of who I am, not as a cover up for being unworthy. It has taken years to truly believe that I am enough with the spangly earrings and DEFINITELY ENOUGH WITHOUT THEM. Perhaps it sounds trivial to some, but this is part of the recovery from I’m not enough.

If you want to untangle any damaging/overconsumption habits of your own, have a read of the seminal book Dopamine Nation by Dr Anna Lembke.

How do we say 'enough' in this world of abundance? Guardian article by Jodi Wilson